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A Muslim woman of Pakistani origin, she was raised in the Toronto area and attended Chinguacousy Secondary School. Initially, Nawaz planned to go to medical school. She completed a Bachelor of Science degree from University of Toronto. She completed a second degree in journalism at Ryerson University in 1992. She worked with CBC Radio, CBC Newsworld, CBC Television's The National, and CTV's Canada AM, and was an associate producer of several CBC Radio programs including Morningside. Her 1992 radio documentary The Changing Rituals of Death won multiple awards at the Ontario Telefest Awards. Stating that she became "bored of journalism", she took a summer film workshop at the Ontario College of Art & Design and began working as a filmmaker, using comedy to explore the relationships between Muslims and their neighbours in contemporary North America. She has described the goal of her production company, FUNdamentalist Films, as "putting the 'fun' back into fundamentalism".

In an interview with Prairie Dog Magazine, Nawaz said her screenplay Real Terrorists Don't Bellydance was "inspired by movies like True Lies and Executive Decision". She describes it as a "new genre of film", a cross between a terrorist flick and a comedy: "I call it a 'terrordy.'" [1] Her use of humour in the television series Little Mosque on the Prairie attracted media attention ranging from CNN and The Jerusalem Post to The Colbert Report even before it aired, prompting the CBC to broadcast it months ahead of its original schedule.

Nawaz's CBC show Little Mosque on the Prairie was inspired by her documentary Me and the Mosque. Nawaz felt that mosques would be run differently if imams were recruited from North America instead of being brought from overseas where cultural differences, especially when it came to women, affected how the imams behaved with their congregation.